


Minutes of the April 7, 2147 Shareholders Meeting of the Kasnia Conglomerate

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, corporate law shenanigans, post 1.10, ray palmer isn't just an inventor he ran a company
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:27:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6514405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the right person is selected for the right job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minutes of the April 7, 2147 Shareholders Meeting of the Kasnia Conglomerate

**Author's Note:**

> This fic may bore the living daylights out of everybody who reads it. I…apologize? It amused me, anyway, but I’m aware that the things that make corporate lawyers laugh aren’t necessarily the sort of things normal people find funny.
> 
> My attempt to remind the writers that Ray Palmer wasn't JUST an inventor, he was also a corporate CEO, which is a very, very different skillset.

“I’m not sure I’m the right person for this,” Ray said, concerned. “Shouldn’t I be going to see about the robots?”

“The risk of you being recognized by one of the employees is too great,” Rip replied. “You do recall the tour we all took? The bust? No, it makes far more sense for you to attend this meeting. We need to disrupt it so that no one will notice when we take the boy.”

Ray sighed, but he put in the contacts and went.

Twelve hours later, Rip returned the boy unharmed, unable to make the final decision to kill him. The Waverider was where it had always stood, unmolested by Savage – it was something of a surprise, that Savage hadn’t taken advantage of their distraction to make the current timeline worse. Or that the boy’s father wasn’t waiting around for him. The boy looked oddly pleased by this fact.

Rip dropped the boy off at the palace and checked in with Sara to see what had happened. 

She yelled at him instead. 

“Yes, yes, I shouldn’t have done it, etc. etc.” he said, annoyed. “But why wasn’t there any reaction to the boy’s absence? Even for a few hours…”

“Well, the guards wanted to alert the dad and Savage, but they were all in the shareholders’ meeting and it’s been locked up tighter than the gold reserve.”

Snart snorted at that. She rolled her eyes at him.

“The...the _shareholders' meeting_? That was only scheduled to last for an hour or two! They were going to discuss the Armageddon virus, it was going to be vetoed, and then the meeting dismissed. Historically.”

“Then _maybe_ you shouldn’t have sent Raymond,” Snart drawled. “I’m going to have to re-think my opinion of him; I’m really enjoying watching him work.”

“Work?” Rip said, alarmed. “What do you mean?”

Gideon was projecting a video of the inside of the shareholders meeting, having somehow – he glared at Sara and Snart – managed to get a direct link onto the internal camera system. 

Oh good lord, Ray was _speaking_.

“- well within my rights as a shareholder of the Kasnia Conglomerate,” he said. “The fact that we have had no successful internal audit, no successful _independent_ audit, in actual years is a perfectly plausible concern. This review of the books and records is not only my right and privilege, it is absolutely necessary.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the people standing on the second level platform. Those were the seats for the minor shareholders, the usually unimportant ones; Rip hadn’t exactly been to many meetings, but he’d shown the crew a quick exposition film released by Kasnia the previous day to get them caught up with the time zone and he was pretty sure that all the decisions were made by the majority shareholders, who sat at the table below. 

Tor Degaton looked like he had a headache.

Savage looked like he was about to commit murder. 

Ray flipped over some papers in a very large and intimidating looking folder. “Additionally, if you’ll review the previous year’s dividend output – which does _not_ appear to have been approved by the appropriate quorum as required by the Articles of Association, unless I’m looking an inaccurate minutes sheet –”

“The articles allow for a under-quorum meeting of the General Assembly when discussing purely economic affairs,” Tor Degaton protested. “Section 15(a)(12).”

“Yes, but dividends are an excluded matter, Section 76(h)(13), requiring either the composition of a full quorum for the General Assembly, either in person or by proxy.”

“We would never make dividends an excluded matter,” Savage snarled. “They are the sole providence of the _majority_ shareholders, just as is the matter which we started this meeting – the issue of population control.”

“Oh, no argument about the issue of population control,” Ray said cheerfully. “That’s a societal matter, totally under the final decision of the major majority shareholder – though I do think you’re starting to get close to being a nuisance under part 7(r) of the preamble, Mr. Savage, you do remember the clause about incessant soliciting of social policy implementations which have already been rejected…? But back to the more important issue at hand, I think you’ll find you’re wrong about dividends. If you’ll look at the text of the share repurchase agreement of 2142, which is incorporated into the Articles under its subsidiary clause 47(mm)(3)(ii)...?”

Everybody in the room proceeded to flip furiously through the multitude of handheld tablets and interactive eyepieces that had made an appearance. Ray waited for them with an expression of absolute peace and beneficence. 

“I think you’ll find it was never officially incorporated into the Articles,” he says helpfully. “At least the publically recorded version. It must have been overlooked, somehow.”

“What is he _doing_?” Rip asked, finally scraping his jaw off the floor.

“Exercising his right as a minority shareholder in a privately held corporation,” Snart drawled. “Apparently there’s something actually called a ‘nuisance shareholder’ back in the early 2000s that got a lot of play time. Something about how the holder of a single share could derail entire corporate meetings, run whole businesses off their tracks.”

“We spent a few hours last night helping Ray look up some 2147 laws,” Sara said. “Kendra helped. It was while you were out scouting with Stein and Jax, remember? Anyway, it looks like there’s no laws against being a nuisance shareholder; it just stopped being popular. Probably due to the whole fascist dictatorship utopia society stuff.”

“And then we looked up their Articles of Association,” Kendra added. “It’s like the Constitution. Well, of their corporation. It was…kind of really boring.”

“But oh, is there a _lot_ of space to make a total nuisance of yourself,” Snart said, looking smug.

“Mr. Palmer _is_ aware that he doesn’t actually own any shares, right?” Rip asked, alarmed. “The contacts were just supposed to get him in the door. If they check on his ownership…”

“Mr. Palmer purchased three shares in the corporation from other shareholders while inside the meeting room prior to the start of the meeting,” Gideon chimed in. “He is now a licensed shareholder. Mr. Snart and Ms. Lance assisted with the creation of the necessary documentation for the remainder of his identity.”

“ _Necessary documentation_?”

“Had to get his biometrics on file,” Sara said. “They use it to ID people. Haven’t you noticed? We did it when we went to get the internal camera hook-up.”

“I’d say what we were watching was boring,” Snart added. “But the look on Savage’s face is making it all worthwhile.”

Rip glanced at the screen.

Savage’s face was purple, with a vein throbbing in his forehead.

It was a distinctly enjoyable sight.

Ray had started talking again. “–the matter of dividend allocation isn’t just an economic issue, Mr. Savage. I’m not sure if you remember, but if you go back to the history of the corporate form itself – as far back in the fourteenth century, though of course one would have to admit that it reached a more relevant and familiar shape through its development between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries – one might argue that dividends are the true _purpose_ of a corporation. As a shareholder, it is one of my quintessential rights, along with my right to inspect the books and records, and more to the point it’s one of the reasons we all became shareholders, am I right?”

Nods throughout the room.

“Obviously, we want to have buy-in on the political process and the social development of our state; that’s equally important, both for us all as individuals and for Kasnia as a whole. But if we lose track of the technical necessities of the corporate form, one really would have to ask why our government is organized as a corporation at all.”

Tor Degaton scowled. One of the other majority shareholders – not Savage – stood up. “A statement like that, Mr. Lecter, is coming perilously close to treason!”

“Discussions within the shareholders’ meeting are protected by the strictest free speech regulations, Ms. Thawne,” another minority shareholders – not Ray – shouted from the second level. “Are you suggesting that those laws no longer apply?”

“Our rights to participate in the corporate debate is no less than yours just because we have fewer shares!” another one yelled. 

“I wasn’t implying –”

“The entire purpose of the shareholders’ meetings _is_ to ensure accountability of the actions of the majority shareholders,” Ray said innocently. “Isn’t it? Or has that changed?”

The entire room descended into yelling, with the majority shareholders, including Tor Degaton, getting on their feet and shouting back. Ray turned a few pages – digitally projected in front of him, of course – and looked pleased with himself.

“This _can’t_ be having a positive effect on the timeline,” Rip said weakly. 

“I’m sure it can’t be worse than you kidnapping the kid to go murder him,” Sara said, not particularly comfortingly. 

“The timeline has not changed,” Gideon chirped. “Although the next five years do see an increase in the length of shareholder meetings from one and a half hours, as was previously average, to approximately three days.”

“Say,” Snart said. “Do you think immortal tyrants can die of stress aneurysms?”

**Author's Note:**

> Additional note: please do not use this as a guide to corporate shareholder meetings. All the law is basically accurate, if taken from a wide variety of different jurisdictions and abused in the name of artistic license, but actual shareholder meetings are not nearly this interesting.
> 
> Also posted on my tumblr at http://robininthelabyrinth.tumblr.com/post/142570305719/minutes-of-the-april-7-2147-shareholders-meeting


End file.
